Page 402 - sons-and-lovers

‘igh horse of hers, an’ it’s back’s that thin an’ starved it’ll cut
her in two one of these days.’
Clara suffered badly from her mother. Paul felt as if his
eyes were coming very wide open. Wasn’t he to take Clara’s
fulminations so seriously, after all? She spun steadily at her
work. He experienced a thrill of joy, thinking she might
need his help. She seemed denied and deprived of so much.
And her arm moved mechanically, that should never have
been subdued to a mechanism, and her head was bowed to
the lace, that never should have been bowed. She seemed
to be stranded there among the refuse that life has thrown
away, doing her jennying. It was a bitter thing to her to be
put aside by life, as if it had no use for her. No wonder she
protested.
She came with him to the door. He stood below in the
mean street, looking up at her. So fine she was in her stature
and her bearing, she reminded him of Juno dethroned. As
she stood in the doorway, she winced from the street, from
her surroundings.
‘And you will go with Mrs. Hodgkisson to Hucknall?’
He was talking quite meaninglessly, only watching her.
Her grey eyes at last met his. They looked dumb with hu-
miliation, pleading with a kind of captive misery. He was
shaken and at a loss. He had thought her high and mighty.
When he left her, he wanted to run. He went to the sta-
tion in a sort of dream, and was at home without realising
he had moved out of her street.
He had an idea that Susan, the overseer of the Spiral girls,
was about to be married. He asked her the next day.

01